Lafi stubbornly tries not to cry, denies that she is to anyone who notices, and fiercely tries to distract herself with busywork. She hates most the moment when she can’t hold it back any longer, when there are too many tears to angrily wipe away, when she has to hug herself and just sob.
7. Their interactions with their pets, if they have them
Lafi doesn’t have any pets; usually a mage’s familiar is their only pet, and Lafi doesn’t have one. With other people’s pets, she usually keeps her distance. Seeing the affection between people and their animals hurts for her. She should have that affection too, but she can’t.
13. Them in formalwear
Lafi hates her formal uniform. Too stiff, too constraining, and marks her as an apprentice despite her power. She behaves, though. She doesn’t fidget. It’ll just remind her how uncomfortable she is in the uniform. She gets it off her as soon as she can.
Worldbuilding June for Lafistory, day 1: Introduction
“Every great world starts somewhere, and here is where we’ll start: Pitch your world! Put into words what your world is about, why it’s unique, what you aim to explore with it!”
Magic coexists with life. This has always been true.
Most people have only enough magic to do one specific thing very well, such as that person at work who always makes the best coffee even though the coffee machine and the beans and the water are the same as how everyone else makes coffee.
Some people, though, have enough magic to be aware of it and to use it.
In the past, magic ran rampant and unchecked. But, like with every other thing in the world, someone decided they wanted to control it under the guise of keeping it under control. Now, magic runs in families most often, with the rare exception who quietly disappears from their normal life once the hunters find them.
Mages now usually fit into one of three categories: non-combat mages who stick mainly to small spells or domestic magic, hunters who specialize in combat or other offensive/defensive magic (often tied to a base of the network of hunters that police all mages), and witches--the ones who create monsters, who take advantage of others’ lives for their own gain.
The hunters like to think they have it all under control, but really, their world hangs on the edge of secrecy and open war, because there are still monsters in the woods...
Y’ALL i’m finally starting to write the lafistory thanks to a metaphorical kick in the pants from my writing prof! but i still need help!! please please please read through some of the lafistory tag and ask me any questions you have about the world or about our main characters lafi, amy, and sage!!
werewolves actually make up a minority of the pack. it didn’t used to be that way, but when rené married justy and suddenly a human was the pack mother, they loosened up. they had to replenish their numbers somehow after the hunters’ massacre.
the massacre killed five of the pack, including the alpha monica, the beta (monica’s husband william), and the next in line to be alpha (monica and william’s daughter, rené’s older sister sasha). rené was left as the only adult in the pack and suddenly beta, with his two-year-old nephew lee suddenly the the alpha, the only one left in the direct alpha line. the only other one left was rené’s 16-year-old sister courtney, and suddenly they had to run a household, rebuild a pack, and care for a child on their own.
rené met justy when lee became best friends with justy’s son casey at daycare. this post explains how the two of them met and how justy and casey became part of the pack. now, ten years later, justy is pack mother and de facto mother to lee, as well as her own son casey and her and rené’s daughter will. the pack is an amalgam of humans, werewolves, and other creatures: niamh the bear child, deertaur tarandra and her qp, the moosetaur alcestis, merboy ixthus, winged boy tino, fox child austy, satyr capella, lion child kione, and others.
the pack is a family. above all, they protect their own from hunters who would come and try to purge the world of creatures with no regard for the people those creatures are.
i should get this story idea down before it slips outta my head; i came up w it on the trip back from ny. it started as an au, actually, a “single parents whose kids are best friends at daycare” au
and then i thought “but what if i threw werewolves in there???”
so it started w/ single mom f-64 w/her son tao and widower m-21 with his son takeo. tao and takeo, of course, are best friends almost at first sight, and their parents meet through them.
but anyway it mutated.
eventually, after a lot of thinking over several hours of riding shotgun and occasionally being the navigator, this is something of what it became.
--
She’s a musician with a son from an ex-boyfriend. They’re quite well-known around the neighborhood for sitting in the nearby park while she plays guitar and teaches him songs. (His favorite is her version of “Cherry Bomb” because she lets him shout “CHERRY BOMB!” whenever it comes up in the song.) When she gets a new job, she has to send him to daycare. This one appeals to her because, despite its apparent quality, it’s quite cheap--for her, anyway.
He lives with the rest of his family on their sprawling property. They’ve got a secret to hide, and he has an orphaned nephew to take care of. After an accident that killed his parents and two of his siblings, the family is left leaderless and sometimes divided. And the nephew needs someone to take care of him--away from the fractured household. He looks for a daycare nearby, and when his nephew makes immediate friends with another boy, an exuberant, adorable one, he decides that that daycare is the one for his nephew. It helps that his nephew’s new friend has a single mother who has zeal--and beauty--equal to her son’s.
When they start going out, he makes sure she never meets any of his family other than his nephew. But things spiral out of his control on the night of the full moon. He stands her up for a date, but it is completely out of his control; he’s being hunted. When she finds out, she doesn’t stand for it.
The hunters have the wolf surrounded, weapons trained on it--silver bullets, all. He knows that he is finished until a familiar voice shouts, “Home run!” The hunters are confused, they turn, and a bat cracks the leader in the back of the head. Girlfriend to the rescue--until one of the other hunters, younger and far more panicky than the others, turns and shoots her, too late for his senior’s shout of “That’s its mate!”
The pack bursts in to save their own, and they bring the injured woman with them. She wakes with her boyfriend keeping vigil next to her.
As she recovers, questions rise: do we allow her to stay, what about her son, etc. As she recovers, she learns: her boyfriend’s nephew is the alpha. His dead mother was set to be the next alpha until she, her younger brother, and their parents were cornered and killed, leaving only the toddler in the direct family line. Since then, the oldest of the family and the de facto leader until the alpha comes of age is his uncle.
(Eventually, they do decide that she and her son stay on as adoptive members of the family. Still human, but part of the pack.) (Also, one of my favorite things to imagine with this is the musician playing piano sometimes during her recovery, always something sad or quiet. The day after she’s declared fit again, “Linus and Lucy” or something equally jubilant comes thundering out of the piano room.)
ok since my head’s a lil fucked by painkillers rn i’m gonna go over stuff that i’ve had in my head, elaborate on recent posts abt lafistory
like the one about a lot of the songs on ab/ap fitting lafistory characters
novocaine is entirely nagendra, especially if you make the same mistake i did and remember every “i don’t feel a thing for you” as “i don’t mean a thing to you” instead.
"We were three years old, and I loved her like no tomorrow. Now we're eighteen, and she's been trained to hate everything I am, and I think I wish we were still three."
